


CAN I SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER

by singingwasps



Category: Hellblazer, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Crossover, WILL THEY MAKE OUT? I MEAN PROBABLY? JOHN CONSTANTINE HAS LOW STANDARDS, harry "complete fucking clownshoes chump" dresden, incorrect use of everything, incorrect use of shakespeare quotes, rating is probably gonna go up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 14:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17204858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingwasps/pseuds/singingwasps
Summary: In which Harry Dresden meets a mysterious barista and a very strange plant, in the proverbial coffee shop au that's actually just the normal universe, but all petty magicians just kinda know each other.





	CAN I SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER

My name’s Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, and I’m a wizard.

No. Really.

For real. I know it’s super popular now to just get some crystals and say you’re a wizard, but I was there first and that half baked little British twerp doesn’t know the first thing about real magic. 

So I’m not one to worship at one of Science’s many altars but sometimes a guy gets thirsty and you gotta get a steaming cup of joe, and you end up at Starbucks. 

I hate the damn place; you can smell the plasticity from a block off, the stupid twinkly indie music by some band no one’s ever heard of like Death Cab for Cutie. What the hell does that mean, anyway, give me Def Leppard any day of the week. My black leather trench coat whipped around me in the August heat, the mantle sticking to my face unpleasantly. I felt a bead of sweat roll down my neck, right into the collar of my Johnny Cash Man in Black style shirt. Don’t ask me why i wear so many layers. Wizard thing. 

A wizard thing I was definitely regretting with each passing moment. During the summer, I don’t really have air conditioning, because anything after World War II breaks down around me. Worse than that, HVAC in places like, oh, say, a massively popular chain with diddly little machines that peddles to the general populace just. Stops after a couple minutes.

But like I said. I needed coffee. 

Barista was a guy maybe a little older than me. Handsome. Maybe, in the right light, not that I’m prone to noticing. Red blooded (but maybe slightly questioning) guy, that’s me. A little shorter than me, hair like a field of wheat. His eyes looked tired, though I had to avert my gaze. Wouldn’t wanna see into some poor chump’s entire life. Weirdly, there was a mustard stain on his black polo. I thought it was mustard. Maybe three or four days stubble, and the distinct unwashed air of a smoker. His nametag said “JOHN” and there was a little wizard hat sticker above it. 

“Hey, can I get a large black coffee,” I asked. I don’t go for the frou frou sizing they have or the sugary heart attack frappe cappe crap.

“Can you get a what,” British. Cockney? 

“You know what a large is, man,” I sighed. 

“Sorry mate,” he blinked, looking bored. “I’m in training, me. What can I do you for?”

A little less jerking around maybe, I thought, but repeated, “Black. Black as midnight on a moonless night.” I felt my mouth tug upwards at a reference he probably wouldn’t get. “Large. Biggest one you got.”

John, if that was even his name, stared at me blankly.

I slouched back in despair. These poor dumb drone bastards, even if he looked a little long in the tooth to be working here, they’ve never known anything. It’s like putting a domesticated deer back into the wild. Pretty soon nothing happens except the deer comes back. “Venti. Pike Place roast. No room.”

“Right you are, old son,” he says, grabbing a cup lackadaisical. “Name?”

I swear Starbucks is a sting operation for necromancers. Not that they ever get your name right, but you gotta know they keep a file of all of it for later. See names are dangerous for wizards - they get your whole one and that’s it. Your number is up, you’re pretty much a puppet for whatever dark forces want to use your name. Even if they don’t get the pronunciation right, just knowing gives me the heebie jeebies. 

“Harry,” I say, after a moment. Well more than a moment. Ok it was five minutes. You happy now? “So you a wizard?”

John gave me the most dead eyed look I think I’ve ever seen in another human being outside of the Nevernever, and went to one of the giant urns of coffee, the modern amphorae. Bacchus never saw such revelry as the morning rush at a starbucks. Maenads everywhere, hysterical women wailing and gnashing of teeth. For now it was pretty quiet, being about ten thirty am. A few people sat in chairs, a couple behind me. Apparently they had places to be.

I heard the air conditioning in the place start screeching and wailing in the far distance. Ah. So it began. 

“I dabble. For the tots,” he says, as a spray of steam almost exploded in his face. How a simple order of black coffee was taking him so long and causing so much chaos was beyond me. “Got a niece. Not so little anymore, they grow up so fast.”

“Respectable, my dad was one,” I commented. A stack of cups started cascading downward, a modern Pompeii. My bum luck with technology.

“Oh, are you a wizard, Harry,” apparently he didn’t get the memo about the other one.

“Only one in the yellow pages,” I say, and notice a plant behind the counter, that seems...to be looking back at me. The temptation to open my third eye, maybe it was a naiad or a leshy or something trapped in this place, a slave to the modern promethean temple of commerce, overcame me. Maybe it was even cute. Maybe she’d be grateful. 

I heard him mutter “Jesus christ,” as soon as I cracked the joke about the yellow pages. He slammed the coffee down, and I noticed the band said “hArrY”.

I took a sip. Cream. I didn’t take cream. Who did he take me for. “Sorry, I said just black? LIke. I know you get a lot of teenagers in here, but a man’s coffee is his temple.” 

“That’s how we make it,” he says, giving me another flat look. 

Like I said, drones, all of them. “Look I’ll pay you for the other one. I’ll even tip.” 

The plant twitches again, and I’m regretting not opening my third eye. Because you see, there’s something hinky in Starbucks, dear Horatio. And John, dear John, with eyes that kind of look like a great sea, bluer than the proverbial heaven or earth, is being manipulated by them. Little ghosts of wisps travel from the weird plant to him, like Pinocchio. Whichever one of them is the Blue fairy is gonna have a lot to answer to. 

So I do finally do it, I open my third eye, and I can’t describe what happens. The Whole starbucks suddenly stinks, like a swamp, earthy and fetid and utterly overcoming me. The last thing I remember before I pass out is John, or the thing calling himself John, saying, “Christ I told you didn’t I?”

**Author's Note:**

> i've been living as the diogenes to jim butcher's plato for long enough


End file.
